Service oriented architecture (SOA) encapsulates application logic in services with a uniformly defined interface, making these services publicly available via discovery mechanisms. SOA applications and applicants may send messages as the basic unit of communication. SOA applications may be a composite of various integrated services that each perform distinct functions and that can be individually modified without affecting the performance of other services. Since SOA may be structured to be platform independent, SOA implemented architecture allows for greater interoperability between different platforms. In SOA applications, as in other architectures, there is often a need to provide value help functionality that provides help to users entering values in a graphical user interface. Enhanced mechanisms for providing such value help are needed.